Editor – Pia Walker, Cupar B&F Treasurer – Willie Johnstone, InverurieThe main features in the above issue were as follows (this is not a comprehensive detail of all it contained. The Club reports, in particular, are too time-consuming at this stage to retype).

EditorialFebruary! The New Year resolutions are still………………Pia Walker

The Annual Niel Gow Festivalby Pete ClarkIn March every year, fiddlers from all over Scotland………….

David Cunningham Snr – a man of many talentsby Pia WalkerAs soon as I started Scottish dancing, I heard about David Cunningham Snr. and in January, I sat down with him to do a ‘brief’ interview. 3 hours and I had material for a book almost. If anyone has not been mentioned, it is most likely because lack of space and not due to any wilful omission. His Wikipedia entry, and what you can find in the B&F archives, just does not cover all he has done. He made his name as a musician, performer, owner of a recording studio and taught many of our well-known band leaders too. He readily admits that the journey the music took him made playing incidental.

David Cunningham Snr. has been a performer from a very early age. He is a Fifer, an only child, from Kettlebridge, Fife. Widowed in 2010 after 50 years with his teenage sweetheart, he remarried in 2014. He has two children: Diane, whose dog he walks most days; and David Jnr., a gentleman not unknown to us all either.

His dad, William (Bill), was born in Fife and travelled to Canada in 1929 “To farm on horse back as he was horse mad. Being horse mad has travelled down the line to my daughter Diane and granddaughter Faith.” He eventually decided to return to Scotland to farm Kinnaird Farm, Dairsie, only to change direction into joinery. He married Christina (Chris) Ireland from Claybraes (hence the tune The Claybraes Two Step). Bill played the melodeon, but only at home although he was quite musical. “He understood the music, although he couldn’t read it.” David tells me. “Actually the musical ability goes further back, all the way to my mystery grandfather, who I was told was a casual farm labourer and semi-pro musician who played the melodeon for dances. My mother was a fine singer as well, a further addition to the musical gene pool.”

David got a Christmas stocking mouth organ, from which he quickly managed to produce a tune, to the accordion. 5-year old David was expected to annoyingly ‘He-Haw’ the day away, but “blew, found a note and played a simple tune very quickly, and probably annoyed the family that way instead.” His father had a thing about others touching his melodeon, but David still sneaked a tune on it here and there, and it was when he was caught that his mum realised that he was musical.

In an effort to find a teacher, his Mum spoke with a neighbour whose son, Bill Barr, was being taught by a Mr JC Cook of Auchtermuchty, an organist who also taught piano and accordion as well as being a choirmaster. David was taught both singing, the accordion as well as music theory as David’s dad was quite determined that David had to learn to read music and “I’m glad, because this is what later earned me money to put food on the table. My father never praised me to my face, though, but I later heard that he never stopped talking about me to his friends. Not a bad thing, I think, it makes you want to strive to become better.” Probably in order to protect his own melodeon, David’s father went to Ladybank Auction and here saw a Bella Donna 24 bass accordion. He managed to make a deal with the owner before it was put to auction and bought the box for £ 5.

David plays the piano accordion, but sees himself as a frustrated button-box player and would have loved to have played the fiddle, but states “I left it too late and then would never have had the patience to learn quickly enough to be happy with the result.”

Whilst still at Kingskettle primary school David joined a Scottish country dance class in Ladybank taught by his school teacher Betty Williamson, even partnering Miss Williamson in a display team at some local concerts. The memory of who the older other dancers were is a bit hazy but, some of the team members, Charlie Todd, John Sturrock and their wives, were to become very prominent in the world of Scottish Country Dancing.

He had already been playing at local concerts, the Women’s Rural and in a group put together by Duncan Campbell the then editor of the Fife Herald. After he was pictured in the Dundee Courier as coming second to John Crawford in the senior Scottish section at a festival in Inverness (he had won the junior section the previous year), his Bell Baxter school pal Ian Brunton passed him a note. The note was from the then top bandleader, David Findlay, who worked with Ian's dad. “As I remember the note simply read 'Looking for an accordion player - are you interested?' I just told Ian 'Tell him, Yes.'”

One day “I was about 17 and helping my dad pick the tatties, hating it as I was a lazy so-and-so, a car drew up. This guy getting of the car said 'David Cunningham, I presume?' It was David Findlay, and I still remember shaking hands with him noticing that my hands were filthy and his were pristine. He said 'So, you're up for it?' and I said, 'Yes!' Later, another note was passed at school saying: ‘You are playing in Doune on Friday and Rochdale on Saturday’. I had never met the band, nor seen the music although the note also said that dots would be there.” Thus began 16 years playing part-time with the Olympians Scottish Dance Band, one of the few bands with a trumpet player playing a cornet fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece to give a more mellow sound, and many recording sessions with other leading bands.

One of the first bands he played with was a local band ‘The Blue Melody’. Due to the sudden temporary loss of their lead box player, they could only play the ‘modern stuff’. In desperation, they drove up from Kettle Hall in the band's black Humber car and asked his dad if David could come and play for the Scottish dances. “I remember Dad coming in from speaking with Eddie Jamieson, who helped run the dances, saying 'Get your box you're needed down at the hall.'” David recalls it was pretty late on that cold dark Friday night. It could have been an ordeal for an adult, never mind an 11-year-old ‘only child’. But the adrenalin kicked in, the crowd loved the wee lad in the short trousers (long trousers were the domain of the 14-year-olds) and the future was sealed. The ‘gig’ was to be a regular booking.

David then tells me of the only time his mum decided to come down in the car with dad to pick him up from the Kettle Hall dances. “Unfortunately a fight broke out, or rather a battle. The women used to place their handbags on the stage by the band members' feet. As the fight progressed, the ladies joined the handbags and sought refuge on and around the stage with accompanying screaming and shouts of encouragement for their chosen combatant. I remember our local policeman, who was built like a mountain, carrying two of the combatants, one under each arm, through the door. The music continued as an absolute necessity to create a so-called calming atmosphere. My mum put her foot down, forbade me to go with them again, and that was the end of that gig.”

David were interested in broadcasting probably from when he first approached the BBC at the age of 13, hoping to get on Children’s Hour with his singing auditioning with My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose and The Birks O' Aberfeldy. The BBC accompanist had to transpose the key to accommodate his teenage voice and he later received a letter saying that they were afraid that his voice would break before the broadcast itself, but that he would make a wonderful baritone! David wanted to be a tenor as Robert Wilson was his hero. (At this point David started singing a couple of lines of A Red, Red Rose to me; he is still in fine voice!) The BBC studio atmosphere and the professionalism of the accompanist, Jill Stewart, so impressed David that he immediately wrote back to them to tell them he also played the accordion. He returned for another audition, this time successful, with his first BBC broadcast in 1956 at the age of 13. His teacher Mr Cook sadly contracted throat cancer and died just before his protégé's first broadcast.

While still at Bell Baxter High School he led a double life. “I never told anyone what I did, as it seemed to create problems with jealousy, etc.” He worked a lot as a soloist with BBC producer Ben Lyon, had an agent in Glasgow and started his variety career at this time. He even applied a few years later for a job as a cameraman with STV, who suggested that he go and train at the BBC Training College before reapplying. He never did this, as his life took a different turn.

After High School, David studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee to become a teacher although he was also fascinated by art restoration. Perhaps this is why he has become so interested in the restoration of sound. However, he never became an art teacher. Instead, he became the performer that he probably was always meant to be, first on the Scottish Variety Theatre Circuit, later with various dance bands.

He started The David Cunningham Trio in 1962 with Olympian colleagues David Findlay and Doug Cargill. David loved doing live broadcasting, with the total concentration necessary to get it right, the adrenaline rush of knowing that there was nowhere to hide. At that time playing was less technique-based and 'The High Level Hornpipe’ was probably the most intricate although “now it is played all the time”. Jim Hunter, producer of The BBC Scottish Dance Music programme, asked each of the lead accordionist of the bands appearing on the programme to play The High Level. When The Olympians got their turn he, completely and unexpectedly at the end of the programme, asked David to play it. “That's what I'm looking for,” was his response, offering him a contract to play it as a feature at the grand concert of the final of the BBC one-off Professional Scottish Fiddle Championship, which was judged by Yehudi Menuhin. “The best paid gig I have ever done!”

The Olympians is a band well known to the world-wide family of Scottish Country Dancers. David and I spent much time swapping stories and impressions about the RSCDS and various people. David started playing at the summer school dances in 1961 a big thing then at a time when Miss Jean Milligan presided over the 2-weekly Younger Hall dances. The stage had floor vents and she and other VIPs sat on stage on chairs placed on top of a carpet over a vent. The floor in the hall is well sprung and when 300 plus dancers bounced up and down, the air had to go somewhere, i.e. out the vents, causing the carpet to dance “not quite in time to the music” to the great amusement of the musicians and the oblivion of the seated dignitaries.

To all dancers, Miss Milligan was something of a god. She was a very good friend of David Findlay and since he worked at BBC Glasgow, he used to drive her to St Andrews. Apparently, Miss M hated the tune Caddam Woods so playing it was a big No No (at least until she left after the break, after which it was always played: “She’s off – we will play Caddam Woods.”). Unfortunately one hot night the windows were wide open, she heard the opening bars, came back onto the stage behind the piano, banged on said piano until the music petered out and shouted, “You are turning my dancers into hooligans!” after which she stomped off. Tempo was everything to Miss M and brings to mind Sir Jimmy Shand’s words to her after she told him he was playing too fast: “Well that's ma tempo, Lass.” She did it once again as the band played a ‘birly’ reel – “well 8 notes to the bar reels can give the illusion of being fast and perhaps it was - just a tad. Miss M’s foot stopped tapping the floor, a sure sign she was nae happy. And then … A dancer hooched … Oh dear! After the inevitable banging on the piano and another ‘hooligan’ speech, David Findlay stood up and gently escorted her through the door at the side of the stage. Apparently, he told her quietly that if she ever did it again, he would never come back to play. She apologised to him, they came back, and the dance resumed.”

David acknowledges that tempo is a moveable feast depending on the dancers’ ages, their abilities, and the dance itself. Strathspeys are the hardest to get right musically, he says, and he clearly prefers those with a clear ‘drag and cut’ to the more pastoral slow-air style of today’s strathspeys or the polka-like interpretations favoured by some. “Nothing is more graceful than when a good dancer dances to a well-played strathspey.” To my comment that I found waltzes played too slowly today, David agreed. We both think that waltzes should have a bit of a swing to them. He refers to Sir Jimmy Shand as the ‘King of the Scottish Waltz’. He likes slow airs, if the accordionist can emulate the fiddle and blend the notes and feels that this is more difficult to achieve on the diatonic button-box due to the ‘press and draw’ where each note begins when the previous note stops. “Certain top exponents do overcome this, however, by making full use of all three rows. This is the undoubted domain of the velvet smoothness of a good fiddler or one of the very few masters of the accordion who have achieved this much sought-after effect.”

David is a Scottish Dance Musician through and through although dance bands then played music other than just for Scottish dancing, Most public dances in Fife leaned towards the modern ballroom dances, perhaps with a Scottish waltz thrown in, whereas further north in Perthshire, Tayside and beyond it would be more Scottish. However, bands played for dancing! With a fixed band membership. “Today I would say such a thing as a fixed band is uncommon. That we are all a big group of musicians with a tendency to play together.” His modest advice to musicians is to simply stop and listen, “The clue is in the title – Scottish DANCE Band!” He quotes his great friend Bobby Crowe, whom he obviously still misses who, when he heard anything that offended his musical ear, was often heard saying: “Their lugs are crocheted on!” He quotes another great name, Sir Jimmy Shand, who used to advice to many: “Just keep it simple, Son.” David himself says that even if your musical talent is second to none, you have to curb this for dance music, as it is not for yourself you are playing, but for the dancers. Balance of sound is also important even if all bandleaders have a sound that they prefer. It is important that all instruments are heard for: “What is the point of a fiddler, if you can't hear the fiddle?”

David knows what he is talking about having been a director of Thane Multimedia Ltd along with his son David for many years, although he did many things outside the music business. After leaving Art College, he worked for 7 years as an agent for the Prudential Assurance Company. Then he worked in Kirkcaldy drawing kitchens for a kitchen design company and because he ended up designing and selling them as well, he started his own business, the St. Andrews Kitchen Design Centre Ltd. in St Andrews with his late wife Jean. After 12 years, the property owners decided to sell the building and the company moved to Cupar causing a downturn in business. They decided to close and concentrate on the music production side, now a viable business rather than a sideline.

David's interest in sound recording started after the first BBC singing audition way back in 1956. Bill bought his son a very early Philips tape recorder for £30 (a fortune in those days). This proved very helpful as David could record his playing and compare it to what he heard on the radio.

He really started his recording career in his kitchen with the next purchase, a Tandberg stereo machine. Teenager David Jnr. was playing music with his schoolfriend, Graham Berry, and his cousin, Ian Adamson, and David Snr. would sit occasionally with Jim Berry in the kitchen recording them with a small homemade mixing desk and the mics in the front room. “We sat in the kitchen with the recording equipment, so I could concentrate on the recorded sound.” After David, Graham and Ian were asked to play on a Thames Television programme featuring Dundee, they decided to record the cassette ‘Heartbeat of Scotland’, their first commercial product. “Around this time local singer Mima Clark asked if I could record her with a mind to releasing the album as a commercial cassette with top accordionist Billy Anderson's accompaniment and arrangements. Word was getting around by then and the contracts began to come in.”

The business took off due to two things. Firstly, the big recording studios were not keen to record products that only sold in small numbers and, therefore, were backing away from niche genres leaving the door open for smaller specialist companies. David was also fascinated with multi-track recording where various sounds were manipulated to produce a perfect performance. During a two-track recording the artist would have to repeat the entire take if something went wrong, and “how many times has a very small thing gone wrong in an otherwise perfectly magical and spectacular take, so it couldn’t be used? “ By using analogue multi-track recording, only the few offending notes needed to be replayed and punched in at the correct time to cover the original flaw thus allowing the magical take to be used on the album. “As soon as we moved to digital multi-track recording we could simply cut a note from a suitable point in the recording and paste it in place.” This way, the production costs, high due to the time caused by the additional editing and mixing carried out after the recording session had ended, could be cut. Recordings were made on location in various halls and David remembers doing some of the Highlander Music Series in Kettle Memorial Hall in Fife. Max Houliston phoned up and asked, “Can you do one for me?” Ron Gonnella was apparently very good at finding interesting venues such as a barn in Glenfarg: “Very cold and full of potatoes and straw, which made it quite like a studio sound, due to the sound-deadening effect of the straw.” Many a recording was done: “in the house in Cupar.”

David and others also started an Accordion & Fiddle Club in Guardbridge, which did very well for some time, perhaps because they made sure that the feature guest bands playing were top names and were paid accordingly.

Very soon after the first albums were completed the studio went digital and they invested heavily in the latest digital multi-track equipment. David Jnr. fortunately, through his in-depth knowledge of computers and all things digital from his time at college, was able to make it all work. In fact, his expert editing skills and intuitive ability to achieve ‘the impossible edit’ became the main feature of the studio, as it is to this day. Thane tries to create the most relaxing atmosphere in the studio in order to produce the best album for the band or record company. This includes the potentially difficult sessions for the strict tempo dance music required by the RSCDS, for example, where a few seconds slower or faster in an 8x48 bar dance is frowned upon and rigorously policed by the committee members with their stop watches.

David retired in 2009 although he retains a keen interest in his son's continued studio work. He then had more time to concentrate on the restoration of old recordings, remastering them onto CDs – this time as a hobby. “Receiving something unlistenable and working with it strand by strand until music comes out or taking a mono recording and making it into surround sound, to me, that is fascinating. There is this software programme called Spectral Layers - a kind of Photoshop for audio. It is brilliant, expensive and complex, but I am getting to grips with it.”

David still owns the now very rare BBC transcription unit he used, worth the price of a small car and he will hang on to it. The diamonds used to track the record were custom cut by a company in England to different specifications to recover the maximum signal with the least noise. In fact, over the years David has remastered many of the CDs we hear on the radio of the great performances of our kind of music. He is especially grateful to Gibson Ross of Ross Records for the opportunity to restore many 78-rpm recordings including those of his boyhood idol Will Starr. This project sounded like great detective work. Involved was the late Charles Innes from Edinburgh, a fascinating expert on old 78-rpm recordings, who travelled to Abbey Road to research and catalogue the EMI archives of the original recording sessions. Not forgetting the very knowledgeable and dedicated collector Robert Wright from Girvan, an undisputed expert on Robert Wilson and the artistes of that era, who travelled to Cupar with the records. David still treasures the letter he received from Will’s sister stating that her brother would have been blown away by the sound produced.

David still remasters audio, but no longer on a professional or commercial basis, just simply for the love of producing sound. He no longer plays the box having retired from his own band, The David Cunningham Trio way back in 1978. After retirement, people started asking him to play on recordings of their own bands or broadcasts, “as obviously I was bound to be free!” David is very grateful to the bandleaders who asked him, but particularly Bill Hendry a great bandleader and family friend, Ron Kerr (Cameron Kerr band), the late John Ellis and Jimmy Shand Jnr.

Jean passed away in 2010 of oesophageal cancer. His present wife, Anne “the brains of the outfit in this house“, he met when she took pity on her neighbour ‘an old man’ shovelling snow in the bad winter of 2010 and started a neighbourly friendship, which eventually escalated into marriage. He still lives in the family home of 45 years and spends his days remastering audio, restoring and editing his cine film of the early 60s including the early years with the Olympians featuring Uncle David (Findlay) as David and Diane called him as a keepsake for the grandchildren. Grandson Scott of course, already a busy drummer on the dance band scene, is now carrying on the Cunningham family tradition four generations after that unknown melodeon player who played for dancing in the 1890s.